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Recently there have been a lot of changes to the infiltrator, I wanted to go over something I've been experimenting with the past couple days that has really surprised and impressed me with its effectiveness.

To list the recent changes off the top of my head:

Introduction of Auxiliary Shield in Utility Slot (+50 shield HP)

Nano-Armor Cloaking no longer removes shield shimmer

Nano-Armor Cloaking now adds +100 shield hitpoints

Nano-Armor Cloak now provides +35% resistance while active

Motion Spotter no longer instantly updates enemy movement and facing for allies, infiltrators only get this info within ~10-20m of the Spotter

EMP Grenades have almost tripled in nanite cost

All battle rifles / scout rifles had their resting CoF adjusted from 0.1 to 0.0

There's more, but those are the big ones and most pertinent here.

I did some quick math on hitpoint numbers; regular infantry have 1000 hitpoints without flak/nanoweave. With Nanoweave they have 1250 hitpoints. With Aux + Nanoweave it is 1312 hitpoints. You may already see where I'm going with this: The new Nano-Armor Cloak allows you to become as tanky as regular infantry, while still being able to cloak, while still having access to radar tools. While cloaked, a nano-armor infiltrator has 1417 hp - this is approaching heavy assault levels and makes the Nano-armor infiltrators the second tankiest class in the game after the heavy.

Now this is something nobody really expects from infiltrators. They don't expect you to take hits like a heavy. More importantly, a lot of players forego that Aux Shield because they think +50 hp is worthless compared to C4 or Medkits. Nanoweave and other resistance abilities, like the heavy assault shield, actually magnify the effective hitpoint gain, and in real-world practice that extra 50hp often means surviving an extra bullet (it having suffered some damage falloff) coming your way. Generally speaking, an infil running Nano-Armor, Nanoweave, and Aux Shield, is going to have 62 to 312 more hp than the average infantryman.

You may be thinking that this applies best to SMG infiltrators fighting at close range - in fact, it hardly makes a difference there. Where it DOES make a difference is your mid-long range fights, and the reason for that stems from the long-range weapons the infiltrator has. No, not the sniper rifles - the scout rifles and battle rifles. You have a strong dps advantage at 30+ meters because of the high damage, high accuracy, moderate rate of fire of your rifles, and the decreasing effectiveness of LMG's as range increases. This is huge. The dps advantage combined with your hp increases means you can go toe-to-toe with full-on resist shield heavy assaults in 1vs1 engagements and win almost every time. Within 10m you can do it if you get some headshots in. Nevermind regular medics / infils / light assaults / engineers.

With this setup you are a mini-heavy assault with a motion spotter or darts who can cloak when threatened.

In regards to using your cloak: 90% of the time you shouldn't be. Cloaking is best used for stepping out of cover to survey for targets without exposing yourself to sniper fire, or for escaping enemy fire. You don't really need to use the cloak, it's a side bonus; you already have more hitpoints than most other infantry. Think of this class as some sort of medium-assault with recon capabilities and you can cloak when you need to run away from something, rather than a class that has to be stealthy to survive. You aren't trying to be stealthy, you are being tanky and killy.

Interesting implication, I hadn't considered it at all! I also haven't really dug into that mid-long-range playstyle all that much, might have to give it a go some more.

I take issue with the last bit, though: personally, I'm not good enough at the infantry game to reliably go toe to toe in a fight. On a good day with my framerate cooperating it's a better than even matchup, but my aim isn't perfect and there are some really damn solid players out there. "Better than even" still means I'm going to lose that fight a fair amount of the time. In my experience, a face to face fight with an enemy not caught flatfooted is a gamble that, even if you win, might leave you low on health and in a bad position. If you can help it it's better not to take those gambles at all, heavy/tanky infil or not! None of that "fair fight" nonsense! ;)

So use that cloak; it's a great way to get to a position or angle that allows an ambush. You never want to start a fight with the enemy expecting you to be where you are. What this HP advantage lets you do is play super aggressively and take risks with your positioning and movement that has a higher risk of those slugmatch fights occurring. Unlike a regular infiltrator, they won't mean an assured loss!